Apologising for his change of mind in making his irrational decision to support the doomed Mayhem (boohoo!) and her dodgy deal (27th March 2019), drainpipe-hat Mogg says Brexit may now be a ‘process rather than an event’, suggesting it could take time to fully break away from Brussels. The general public will be as mystified […]
Sometime in the 1940’s somehow I stumbled upon a radio programme called The Brains Trust. I think my mother perhaps used to listen to it. This must have been before 1948 because I was upset by media enthusiasm when, on 12th April 1948, Professor CEM Joad (1891-1953), a key figure in the programme, was convicted […]
when I suddenly forgot to flap my arms sufficiently vigorously and finished up at the bottom of a flight of stairs with what turned out to be two broken ribs. They were somewhat painful. In hospital in the middle of the night, after oral morphine had settled me down a good deal, I was suddenly […]
For some years I’ve had on my ‘To Read’ shelves a book called ‘The New Age under Orage’ by Wallace Martin (Manchester University Press 1967). I bought it because of AR Orage’s connection with Gurdjieff and thought it might throw some light on another who, like Maurice Nicoll – mentioned briefly in the book – […]
Everything that happens in life is accidental… Even the things we imagine to be deliberately planned out are the result of accidentally stimulated decision-making. I do not remember what it was prompted me to acquire (accidentally) Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen somewhere around 1963 when I was accidentally mired deeply in wage slavery – […]
In July 2018 I was given the task of reviewing Cor van den Heuvel’s Selected Haiku. He is regarded as a significant figure in haiku circles. In his Afterword I learned that he was much influenced by Alain Robbe-Grillet’s work which propelled me into re-reading the novels with this in mind starting with Jealousy. This […]
I was on a train to London the other day. Sitting opposite & next to me were a couple of blokes on their way to Twickenham to watch a rugby match. When they’d run out of their own conversation about things happening in the construction industry, the more obviously affable of the two turned to […]
Writing Proper Haiku Affects the Way You Are in the World In their Mutative Metaphors in Psychotherapy (1994), Cox & Theilgaard offer brilliant insights into the way that conventional poetry can be used to stimulate the seamless progress of formally therapeutic interventions; they describe how very skilled operators can use poetry & drama in their […]
restless cat curls up at last on the magic rug bought in Marrakesh * hedge druid! she says – no convocations or dancing circles for me * in a gold-framed mirror: the garden and a friend * outside the night river moves seawards to return later moon-drenched * meeting a good old friend – her […]
sometimes wishing that God was real – this temple to the spirit (St Peter’s Colchester) * the light through the arched window green as the tree outside * digging deep to find the roots of summer bonfires * thrice starting to tell his life story – three times they return to theirs * four ceramic […]
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